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Media Matters with Bob McChesney

Media Matters featured host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. The program ended production with the Oct. 7, 2012, show. McChesney is a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Our guest this week is Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald is, with Amy Goodman, a recipient of one of the inaugural Izzy Awards from the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College.

Greenwald is a former constitutional lawyer who started blogging in 2005, acting as his own editor/publisher in the I.F. Stone tradition. In 2007 he moved his popular blog to Salon.com, retaining full editorial freedom. Week after week, in meticulously documented and detailed blog posts, he skewers hypocrisy, deception and revisionism on the part of the powers that be in government and the media. His 2008 reporting on a false claim about 9/11 by then-U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey led to a retraction. With devastatingly crisp arguments, Greenwald has inveighed against torture and defended constitutional rights for all, whether they be “enemy combatants” or American protesters. He has toughly criticized both Republicans and Democrats, and his blogging frequently sparks debate in major media and on Capitol Hill.

The Izzy Award is named after the legendary dissident journalist Isidor Feinstein “Izzy” Stone, who launched his muckraking newsletter “I.F. Stone’s Weekly” in 1953 during the height of the McCarthy witch hunts. Stone, who died in 1989, exposed government deceit and corruption while championing civil liberties, racial justice and international diplomacy.

Our guest this week is Craig Aaron, Acting Senior Program Director of Free Press. Before joining Free Press, he was an investigative reporter for Public Citizen's Congress Watch, where he helped create and launch the WhiteHouseForSale.org Web site. Craig previously worked as the managing editor of In These Times magazine and is the editor of the book Appeal to Reason: 25 Years In These Times. His reporting, commentary and criticism have appeared in numerous national publications.

Our guest this week is film-maker Robert Greenwald, founder and president of Brave New Films. He will talk about his new project, Rethink Afghanistan. As part of the Rethink Afghanistan documentary campaign, he will travel to Afghanistan to meet with people and organizations, conduct in-person interviews, and gain a better understanding of the war.

Our guest this week is Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher. His latest book is "Why Obama Won."

In the first book of its kind, Greg Mitchell, award-winning author and editor of Editor and Publisher, probes the historic 2008 race for president, from the first primary to the aftermath of the election – from the "netroots" to the national media. Mitchell explored the campaign as it happened from a unique perch--as a columnist for a mainstream magazine and as a blogger for two of the most popular political sites in the world. In "Why Obama Won" he dissects, with insight (and often humor), all of the key moves and controversies, candidates ranging from Stephen Colbert to Sarah Palin, and the full emergence of new online tools and grassroots organizing as key players in the exciting contest. Political campaigns, and America, will never be the same. Mitchell is the author of nine books for major publishers, including "The Campaign of the Century" and, most recently, "So Wrong for So Long," on Iraq and the media, acclaimed by Bill Moyers and Bruce Springsteen, among many others.

Mitchell has written nine books, including Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton) and The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, and his articles have appeared in dozens of leading newspapers and magazines.